Monday, May 28, 2018

This story
is from an excellent book entitled Rumsfeld:
His Rise, His Fall, His Catastrophic Legacy, by Andrew Cockburn.

As things
were going to shit in Iraq during the occupation, it became increasingly clear
to most people, not including the president, that Rumsfeld needed to be fired.
So, as is typically done in D.C., the plotting of his removal began. Former
national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state, James
Baker, both of whom had served with Papa Bush, met and composed a rather
extensive paper delineating the most serious errors and misjudgments in Shrub’s
foreign policy. This paper included a recommendation for a change of leadership
in the Department of Defense and it was passed on to Papa Bush to pass on to
Shrub.

When the
Bush families had arrived at Kennebunkport, Maine in late August, Papa Bush
took Shrub aside and gave him the paper. Shrub looked at it “disdainfully
before tossing it aside, reportedly with the words, ‘I’m sick and tired of
getting papers from Brent Scowcroft telling me what to do…..’ With that, he
exited, slamming the door behind him.” [p. 219]

Nonetheless,
at times Shrub sought his father’s guidance as he did as he became aware of “criticism
that his administration had been excessively beholden to a particular clique,
and what to know more about them.” So, one day, Shrub asked his father, “What’s
a neocon?”

Papa Bush
asked whether he wanted names or a description. George Jr. said “Description.”
Papa Bush; “Well, I’ll give it to you in one word: Israel.” [p. 219]

Not a bad
description, especially as it seems Papa Bush had a pretty clear understanding
of the limitations of his son, George. Too bad more of the American people had
not had that understanding in November of 2000. For that matter, too bad the
Republicans on the Supreme Court did not understand that.

Sunday, May 6, 2018

Below is a
link to an article considering, among other things, the impeachment process
embedded in our constitution. And it is illuminating, at least up to a point. But
the article contains one rather important inaccuracy, concerning what kinds of
presidential acts are impeachable. The article claims:

“From this point of view, it seems most
persuasive that prosecutors should be able to charge a sitting president with
ordinary crimes. Insofar as it restricted impeachment to “high crimes,” the
Constitution did not directly address a circumstance like this one.”

The
error here is the claim that presidential impeachment is “restricted . . . to
‘high crimes’.” Presidential impeachments include but are not limited to “high
crimes and misdemeanors,” which is an error commonly made. This error is
related to another, more important error, viz., that impeachment is about
removal from office and only about removal from office. Rather, as the early
history of impeachments illustrates, impeachment is a means of holding office
holders accountable for their actions and accountability need not dictate
removal from office. The Constitution should be read as saying that, only in cases of high crimes and misdemeanors, may
a president be removed from office. For other instances of abuse or misuse of
power, presidents may be held accountable via impeachment without necessarily
being removed from office. They may be punished or dealt with in other ways,
such as fines or censure. [Andrew Jackson was censured by the Senate and he
argued not that this could not be done but that it could only be done via the
impeachment process. Jackson was correct.]

So,
for example, in the case of Bill Clinton’s impeachment and trial, he could have
been held accountable for his behavior, censured by the Senate and, perhaps, be
required to apologize to the American people for his behavior, without being
removed from office. And, of course, this would have made more sense than thinking
that Clinton’s actions constituted “high crimes and misdemeanors,” when clearly
they did not. To say that “obstruction of justice” is always a “high crime and
misdemeanor” is unconvincing, especially when the obstruction was not in the
service of hiding a political abuse of power, such as undermining the
Constitution via illegal actions like funding a war against congressional
wishes or conducting secret bombings of a country the nation is not at war
with.

To
me, while I don’t support impeaching Trump, this is not to say that he could
not be, constitutionally, impeached, tried, and held accountable for his
behavior without being removed from office. As Gerry Ford said a long time ago,
it is up to the Congress to decide what is an impeachable offense and whether
the alleged offense or offenses constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The
men who wrote the Constitution knew that they were creating a dangerous office
when they created the presidency and, via the impeachment process, tried to adopt
a way of holding its occupants accountable as well as making them removable. We
would do well to follow their constitutional procedures.